US Cable Support > Charter Internet/TV > 37% Ultra 100 Price increase??

reply to Janemba

Re: 37% Ultra 100 Price increase??

Good for you that you wouldn't pay it, but to call me asinine because I find value and use in it? Thanks for assuming you represent the maximum usage of everyone everywhere. Did you hear that everyone? Cork1958 says 100meg is asinine, lets just stop advancing network technologies since no one needs or wants that speed.

reply to senseotech

Re: 37% Ultra 100 Price increase??

NormanS:

You reflect my views as well. I think that most consumers don't even realize that you don't need more than 30mb to stream live reasonable quality HD video...all they know is that marketing departments from various service providers tell them that the faster, the better. They do no research themselves.

Uninformed consumers make it difficult for those who are informed to get reasonably priced service.

My experience is that lowest ping times are more critical for a better internet experience than faster speeds.

They can do all the research they want to get "informed", but it isn't going to do any good, if there is no competition in their local area.

DSL to me is not competition.

What it all comes down to is that Charter is too greedy to offer a lower speed tier to their internet packages. They also penalize the customers who only want to have internet and not bundle TV and phone. In general things were much better before the new management took over and increased prices and cut services all across the board. Why not got back to the days when they at least offered 4 distinct internet packages that suited all walks of internet users. I tried the 100/5 package for about 3 months and found that it was overkill for me. I also could never achieve the advertised speeds due to oversaturated nodes in my neighborhood. It was not a good value given that I couldn't achieve even 70% of advertised speeds.

reply to NormanS
That's it in my subdivision...IFITL. No U-verse coming here, if that's any better.

Besides, Charter reliability would have to suffer VERY badly for me to go back to AT&T. I had horrible service experiences with AT&T; just the opposite of what the BellSouth teleco experience had been for years.

In my case, SBC was an improvement over Pacific Bell (one of two ILEC companies under The Pacific Telesis Group; bought by SBC in 1996). Prices went to Hell after SBC/AT&T bought Bellsouth; they started jacking legacy SBC prices up to the legacy Bellsouth levels.

Still, DSL is competitive in the S.F. Bay Area. Our MSO is Comcast, whose prices run higher than the other MSOs. And I found the AT&T 3.0 Mbps tier to be a reasonable compromise of cost vs. speed, even at BS price levels, when compared with Comcast. Plus we have at least two DSL CLECs with decent tiers for the price.

BTW, I fired them, and hired Sonic.net, LLC because of cap-and-overage; low-cost ($19.98 for the data line item), moderately high speed (4.9 Mbps on the loop AT&T would only offer 3.0 meg service on) was a bonus.

Because Comcast isn't in a solid monopolistic position here, they do have a low-end retention tier called, "Economy". DSL speed for near DSL price. I am reasonably sure they'd rather not have their users on that tier, but with DSL providers offering decent plans, plus a couple of very small FTTP providers, it gives them a chance to keep customers.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Comcast also has that "economy" tier here. Comcast is just outside the village limits of where I live (3 houses down)

As much as I don't like Comcast crap, I'm glad to have Charter here in the village. I've said it before though that I've NEVER had an issue with Charter's internet or tv even, except for the brain dead way they seem to want to run the business!

Glad to hear that you actually stopped and did the math on the yearly costs of the "little" difference in price between the ultra and the other tier. Makes it sound a little different that way, doesn't it?!